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Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Reader's Diary #836- Michael Brennan: Electric Girl Volume 1

Electric Girl, by Michael Brennan, has a good premise behind it. Virginia, the protagonist, is born with electrical powers. Which is fine in and of itself, but Brennan keeps them relatively subdued, and it becomes like a mild version of Stephen King's Firestarter. The inclusion of an invisible trouble making gremlin named Ooogleeoog, who gave Virginia her powers in the first place, has the potential to give the book enough originality to keep it afloat.

Unfortunately, Brennan seems bored with the premise before it even begins. The result is a bunch of comic short stories in which Virginia's powers and the presence of Oogleeoog hardly even come into play. Stories about zombies and lovesick robots could be interesting enough in their own right, but I doubt it's what new readers of Electric Girl would be signing up for. It's not what I signed up for. While the artwork is fine, I was hoping for better writing.

There was one story which gave me some hope. In a flashback to her childhood there's a scene in which a predator tries to abduct a naive Virginia into his van. Oogleeook watches on and wants to intervene when he is reminded that it would be against the gremlin code (which states they can only cause trouble, not prevent it). He finds a loophole. What makes this story more poignant is the character building that is lacking from the other stories.

For now however, I think I'm done with the series, but should someone tell me that in subsequent volumes there's a more consistent arc, I'd be willing to give it another shot.